Book Review: Poison Study – Maria V. Snyder

Choose: A quick death…or slow poison…
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace – and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust – and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear….

First Sentence: Locked in darkness that surrounded me like a coffin, I had nothing to distract me from my memories.

My Review:

I’ve heard a lot of things about Poison Study, but mostly, I’ve heard nothing but good praises for it. Going into the book, I was very nervous. Will it live up to my expectations and to people’s praises? Will I eventually end up regretting my choice to read it? Or will I be with the majority this time and actually like the book?

After reading the summary of Poison Study, I was somewhat expecting Yelena to be a trained assassin and not a regular girl. I mean, she murdered someone! (I know, I know, I have a huge imagination.) To my surprise, Yelena turns out to be a regular orphaned girl who did something extremely desperate to get out of an extremely desperate situation. I felt sorry for her, especially since nobody would believe her at first, although it was totally understandable why nobody would believe her.

“You once said I wasn’t ready to believe your reason for killing Reyad. I’ll believe you now.”
“But I’m not ready to tell you,” I said and left the room. (206)

Although Yelena is a normal girl, sometimes, she frustrated me so much. Valek kindly gives her great advice, which she doesn’t put to good use, resulting in her almost getting killed at least twice. I wanted to scream at her to think about what she’s learned, but Yelena was absolutely clueless. The good thing is, she gets smarter by the end of the book.

At first, I was worried that I wouldn’t buy into Yelena and Valek’s relationship. When I hear the words “Poison Study,” I also hear something along the lines of “Valek is soo awesome” and “I want a Valek!” I’ve heard similar words murmured from other books I’ve read, except with different guy names of course, and I ended up not buying into those relationships. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed and loved reading about Yelena and Valek together. They just have this subtle chemistry that would just grab you and make you grin like a fool.

Sensing my mood, Valek said, “An execution order hasn’t kept us apart before. There are ways to get around it. We will be together.”
“Is that an order?”
“No, a promise.” (361)

Every plot twist in Poison Study was very predictable to me. In fact, I predicted all the major plot twists about two hundred pages before the actual big reveals happened. (Should I mention that I predicted something that would happen in book three of the Study series? Like whoa.) However, Maria V. Snyder smartly inserted the big reveals in the scenes where there was so much tension and worry over the characters going on that you don’t mind that you’ve already guessed everything that would happen because you’re already focusing on all the tension and the worry and the fighting scenes happening.

Overall, if you have never tried Poison Study before, then what are you waiting for? Seriously, listen to the hype; everything they said is true, Poison Study is that good. I will definitely check out the next two books in the Study series, Magic Study and Fire Study, even though I heard some not so good things about the two sequels.

The next two books in the series aren’t as good as the first one, but they’re still worth checking out. The author just announced she was writing three more books for a grand total of six! Excellent review; I read this book a long time ago, but I remember loving it.Rebecca recently posted…Follow Friday

I love this book!!! Glad you liked it too :D. And The rest of the series couldn’t really get back up to the level that this one was at.
And I can’t wait for the next three to come out!!!
Great Review :DKimberly recently posted…Update for the Bout of Books Read-A-Thon

It looks like everyone but me knows that there would be three additional books.
Hopefully the three additional books will be as good as Poison Study! ;DKelly recently posted…Book Review: Poison Study – Maria V. Snyder

I’m glad you liked it! I’ve read the series thrice (in a span of 6 years though :P) and I must say I still enjoyed it immensely during, before and after each read. If you haven’t heard of Snyder’s other series, Healer, I’d recommend it! (The first book is titled Touch of Power)

LOL Debby! xD
And definitely check this out, I was like ehhh, the hype is going to disappoint me again, but it didn’t. I have a feeling you’ll love Poison Study too! :DKelly recently posted…Stacking the Shelves [33]

OMG!!! I just read Poison Study and Magic Study last week and I’m currently reading Fire Study. Poison study was great with all the intrigue. And yes, I’m one who WANTS a Valek!!! Unfortunately I didn’t get enough of him in Magic Study and none of him so far in Fire Study. I really loved the first 2 books but Fire Study is going a bit slow for me. Having read the books back to back, Fire Study does just a bit more recapping than I want. I find myself, saying to myself and the book, ‘alright already let’s just get on with it and bring on Valek’. That’s not to say that Yelena and the other characters aren’t interesting in their own right.=beacuse they’re awesome. But I need more time with Valek. I was happy to see on goodreads that there are at least 1 or 2 more books planned for the series. There is just too much left to cover. It would be impossible to conclude it with Fire Study without me feeling short changed.

WHAT. VALEK DOESN’T APPEAR MUCH IN MAGIC STUDY AND FIRE STUDY? BRB, SOBBING. ):
Anyways, I just heard that there would be three additional books to the series, so yay for that! :DKelly recently posted…YA Icons Tour Signing + Giveaway (INT)

Ohhh I’ve been wanting to read this one! Like you, I’m leery about the hype (black sheep here!), but I’m glad you liked it! I love the kind of relationships that I can get into, because I’m not usually a fan of romance. After reading your review, I definitely want to read it sooner!

Yes, I was super suspicious of Yelena and Valek’s relationship at first, but in the end, I’m cheering for both of them. The subtle chemistry they have is just amazing! :D
And definitely check out Poison Study when you can Jessi, it’s definitely worth the hype!Kelly recently posted…YA Icons Tour Signing + Giveaway (INT)

Great review! I loved this one so much! I bought it on a whim without hearing anything about it first (I usually read some reviews or something first) and was absolutely blown away! I’m glad you loved it too!

I’m glad you braved it, and read this book, even though the hype made you wary. I know how you feel. Sometimes hype makes me super afraid to read a book, because I will go in with such high expectations, that most books couldn’t live up to.
If I were you, I would definitely read the sequels. I think they’re just as good as Poison Study, and feel that they didn’t decrease in quality whatsoever.

I’m usually not really into fantasy, but I loooved this Poison Study. Unfortunately I haven’t read the second books yet, though! ): And I didn’t think there would be any romance- I mean, I had heard some stuff about it like you had but I didn’t really see how it would work out, and I’m somebody who personally always loved some romance thrown into stories. xD But yeah, I ended up really enjoying reading about their relationship. :DLexi recently posted…Review: A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

I haven’t read the second book yet either. -cries- ):
Yeah, I’m SO glad I enjoyed reading about Yelena and Valek’s relationship. They are sooo cute; I definitely want more of them together! :D<3Kelly recently posted…Top Ten Favorite Beginnings/Endings In Books

this book has such a cool, unique premise. It’s impossible to read the synopsis and decide against reading it. Will give this one a try – im sure that itll be exactly what I need to read at the moment! :D

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Effortlessly Reading sometimes receives ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) from publishers or authors in exchange for honest reviews. Please note that no compensation of any kind has been provided in exchange for a review. Any use and/or duplication of my material without any permission is strictly prohibited.